Comment by yieldcrv

I don't know what other people think.

Afghanistan initially was to fight Al Queda, and then just target Taliban military infrastructure when being used to support Al Queda, but then the scope changed to fighting the Taliban, leveraging the lack of discernment from constituents at the time and their undiscerning Islamaphobia (and the Taliban's need to retaliate). The Taliban moved between non-state enemy combatants to not being an enemy at all multiple times, confusing constituents. Ultimately, suppressing the Taliban failed after 20 years and America and NATO decisively lost, but there was a fun opium poppy trade going on. So, historically that makes it worth it, we didn't get Hong Kong 2.0 but it was a nice try.

Iraq was just because to finish a vendetta, with the President once again leveraging the lack of discernment from constituents at the time. There are opportunists that seek to finish oil pipelines, but this has had mixed success given that remote areas continue to be conflict zones.

In the meantime, the President and defense contractors were also able to get Congress to authorize a global endless war against terrorism, sort of as long as it was against Al Queda and other non-state extremist groups, which was somewhat necessary given the adhoc undefined nature of Al Queda and other offshoots of that concept. but there are a lot of exceptions that make the global military authorization to be kind of whatever we feel like, which makes the criticism of America accurate: that there is no moral underpinning from its actions despite the leaders always saying there are.

There is a convenience in being able to surround Iran with American-led military interventions and bases. But this has also largely failed with Afghanistan no longer being occupied by the US, and not really limiting Iran's growth, unless slowing down Iran over 20 years was good enough for the last 20 years. But at this point in time, nothing has been solved.

from what I can tell, other people don't think that. but this reality is more capable of being corroborated.